Drawing in the Dark

I actually like the way I dealt with the large pieces of paper on the floor, which I wanted to do because I didn’t want to loose the instrument of my feet drawing, as well as my hands. When I used to do them, it was an improvisation. It was the same adrenaline rush that I get before going on stage, and I didn’t know what would come of it. It was highly experimental, and one aspect of it was that as an abstract choreographer, I use my body and improvisation. Through this improvisational process, I found a whole new realm of operating on the floor. That was fascinating because since I was down on the floor, my face was very close to what I was drawing—too close to see the details of some things. So it was similar to what I like about making dance. If I know too well what I’m doing, it loses a mystery.

Gillian Sneed talks to Trisha Brown. Brown’s work is on view at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis through July 20. 

Trisha Brown creating a performative drawing, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2003. Photo: Kelly & Massa Studio. Courtesy Trisha Brown Dance Company.

Gillian Sneed: You founded your dance company in 1970 and adopted a modern dance practice that created a theoretical and visual dialogue with the radical developments in performance art, conceptual art, and painting of the time. What are your thoughts on the need for art disciplines to create such rigid boundaries between modern dance, performance art, and visual art? Are such boundaries necessary? Where do you think we stand now—have we broken these boundaries?

Trisha Brown: This is interesting for me because I haven’t taken that many visual arts interviews. From my perspective, when I started making work such as walking down the side of buildings, or doing pieces like Floor of the Forest, doing aerial work, accessing the air above me, getting out on roofs or whatever, it always puzzled me that there wasn’t much attention given to the work at the time. It was as if I had a wondering spirit discovering other things that I was performing. They had no frame. I think of myself as being interdisciplinary, and I think some people assess you once, and you are supposed to stay like that forever. But that isn’t how it works. People had a really hard time understanding my work at the time. I think that if I had had a label or a boundary in those years, I would have fit into a frame of some sort. I knew Fluxus, I knew “conceptual art”, [but] at the time, there was no real sense of “performance art.” Hardly anyone came to those early performances.

This past summer at Documenta, where my piece Floor of the Forest was reenacted, it was emotionally overwhelming to see so many people seeing it, because when I first showed it, I don’t even think there were even 50 people there. Even when I performed Walking on the Wall at the Whitney in 1971, I thought there was so little attention to the work. I couldn’t afford to continue trying to do that kind of work because nothing came of it. It didn’t happen. I’ve been in 22 museums, and I was invited to the Venice Biennial in the 80s to show my drawings, [but] I never followed through. In my heart I have always been a dancer, and I am still a dancer. I know dance very well [and] it is a part of my identity. I was shy about showing my artwork up until the mid 80s. My artist friends always engaged me in conversation, but eventually, I had to make a living. I chose between dance and art, and I felt I was better trained in dance than art.

GS: You are slated to be featured at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis from April—July in an exhibition entitled Trisha Brown: So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing that will feature both your drawings and your dance. Could you tell me a little more about your work for the exhibition, your process, and the conjunctions for you between your dance and your drawing?

TB: Well they have gathered everything I’ve done, and it functions like a retrospective or, in the case of my drawings, like a “rescue.” I have made about 50 drawings since 2000. Some will be in the show, and one drawing will be performed live by dancing/ drawing on a large piece of paper on the floor.

I actually like the way I dealt with the large pieces of paper on the floor, which I wanted to do because I didn’t want to loose the instrument of my feet drawing, as well as my hands. When I used to do them, it was an improvisation. It was the same adrenaline rush that I get before going on stage, and I didn’t know what would come of it. It was highly experimental, and one aspect of it was that as an abstract choreographer, I use my body and improvisation. Through this improvisational process, I found a whole new realm of operating on the floor. That was fascinating because since I was down on the floor, my face was very close to what I was drawing—too close to see the details of some things. So it was similar to what I like about making dance. If I know too well what I’m doing, it loses a mystery. So here I was launched into something totally new. I had to guess what I was doing a lot of the time, which I still try to do. I was even drawing with my eyes closed at times. It needs to feel like it hasn’t been cooked in the oven too long. You have to make up the way to do it the first time, with no reference. [In one instance] I started chasing my left foot with my charcoal while I was rolling. You get a glimmer of that in the drawing and its relationship to the body if you choose. I got a sense of abstraction and narrative going on the same page.

Since drawing on the floor is very familiar to a dancer, and not so familiar to a regular audience, it was hard to articulate to people to just relax and look at the artwork. Now [performative approaches to drawing] are more established. It’s always just a matter of time. If you can just stay in the spotlight for a matter of time, eventually the work will speak for itself.

GS: It seems like lately visual arts institutions have been recognizing your work more than in the past. As you already mentioned, last summer your piece Floor of the Forest, was re-enacted at Documenta in Kassel as a performative intervention into a traditional museum space, and now there is this exhibition at the Walker Art Center. Why do you think the visual art world has recently focused more attention on your work?

TB: I think it’s always fun to discover someone who’s been right in front of you forever. I’ve known the senior curator of performing arts at the Walker, Philip Bither, forever, as he started in dance in Vermont. Now he’s emerged as a curator at the Walker. He took me with him. But, as I said before, I have always been in museums and institutions intermittently—as I mentioned 22 museums and the Venice Bienniale—but I guess overall there has been a lack of the ability on the part of visual arts audiences and curators of looking at the work, and in understanding that a dancer could be multitalented. I guess now people finally get it.

GS: I recently visited WACK! The exhibition of feminist art from the 60s, 70s, and early 80s at P.S. 1, which included a lot of documentation of experimental dance, happenings, actions, events, and performance art, including the work of Yvonne Rainer, Joan Jonas, and Disband. I thought it was curious that none of your works from that time were included, and I was wondering if you perhaps could shed some light on that fact. What are your feelings on your relationship to the multiplicity of artistic responses to feminism that developed in those years? How did your work fit into what other women artists/ dancers/ performers were doing at the time? How was it different? What was your relationship to feminism then, and what is your relationship to it now?

TB: I think the fact that I doubled back into dance choreography after exiting the performative work of the surfaces explorations, and walking on various things, maybe caused the visual arts arena to forget about me. As far as feminism goes, I’m here. I have been here all along. I’ve danced with Yvonne, I taught a class that Joan Jonas participated in for one or two years.

Running a dance company is a very, very big job, and I am just saying now that I also direct opera. I am trying to remember that I do other things too. Generally women are often overlooked, but in this case, maybe it was as simple as the fact that the curator doesn’t know about me. I’m working all the time, and I don’t really have any time to worry about things like that. What I do as a feminist is that I help young women in dance, because it is a hard road to haul. They stop me on the street, and they ask me if they can talk to me. The question that often eventually comes up in conversations is if it’s harder for a woman in dance than a man, and the answer is yes. But, I tell them, that that now that I’ve confirmed it, to put it out of their mind. To dwell on it is to put yourself down, so don’t dwell on it.

GS: What ideas interest you most these days? Where do you see the future of your work? Where do you see the future of dance and performance art? What is on the horizon for you work-wise in the coming year?

TB: I’m thinking about the proximity of my drawing to my dancing. In the past I have worked with other exalted figures to think about the designing of my stage. I would be interested in continuing with that. I would need to put together a different kind of team, as I don’t know anything about projections on the stage and such, but I am interested in designing stages, working on costuming, learning something new. In terms of the directions of dance in the future, I really have no idea what directions it may go in.